Monkey Links
Friends' web sites
- www.myspace.com/snurgen and www.myspace.com/sacredsomething - My nephew James's and his band Sacred Something's myspace pages.
- www.myspace.com/brianparrymusic - My brother Brian's myspace page - check out the video of his band Matt Raffia performing on UK TV in the 1970s!
- Jonny and Mandy's blog - Keep up with all the latest from my ex-workmate Jon Hill and wife Mandy. Also, check out their House Of Gin - home of the Hills website (in particular the Belgian Beerfest 2004 web page where you can download a 5 minute movie of our trip to the Diksmuide Belgian beer festival in October 2004.
- Monkey Adventures - The adventures of Arfer the gorilla and Calypso the cheeky monkey, owned by Steven McCombe and Gemma.
- Grebeau - Creative and intelligent dance music (completed brand new remixes of Monkey Magic in 2003).
- Perpetual Loop - Creative music and soundscapes.
- STEVEN McCOMBE'S WEB SPACE - Features the work of my friend, the budding artist and animator Steven McCombe! Includes lots of visual treats, including the animated film "Mad Eye Disease" - you've got to check this out!
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- A Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode parody I helped make with some friends in 2001!
- The Jedi Who Loved Me - A Star Wars spoof movie I made with some friends during Winter 1999/2000!
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Foiled Productions - All about the low-budget movies made by Foiled Productions. Includes "Foiled" - a no-budget Sci-Fi B-movie made between 1995 and 2000. Check out this site - it will blow your mind!
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24 Hour Hitch - When I was a student several years ago, I took part in a sponsored hitchhike around Europe every year. Read about my amazing adventures (with pictures) here!
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Sheep Man - Lots of pictures from a rather dubious short film I made with some friends back in March 1996!
Search engines
- Search Engines - Great guide to search engines and thousands of specialised search tools. Your one-stop resource for everything you ever need to search the internet!
- Search Engine Showdown - This essential web site by super searcher Greg Notess is updated daily, and features all of Greg's latest insights, reviews and analysis! Includes a search engine features chart, his terrifically useful "search engines by features" page, a cheat sheet showing all of the basic and advanced features offered by each of the major search engines.
- Major Search Engines - The Major Search Engines page has been given a complete overhaul. Since it began back in April 1996, search engines on this page have been listed in alphabetical order. No more. The page now gives you Search Engine Watch's
opinion of which search engines are "top choices" for your searching needs,
along with those you should "Strongly Consider" and "Ones To Watch." The
page also lists major search providers who focus on behind-the-scenes
powering of other search engines.
- Google Fight - Enter two words or phrases and see who wins at Google based on result count. Yahoo easily beats Google in a face-off I tried. There's also a "Best Fights" list where you can review what others have done.
- Google - Everyone's favourite search engine - includes the entire USENET News archive, Google Zeitgeist - what people are searching for at Google, Google Image Search, Google News and much much more. Note: Google's news site now crawls more than 4,000 sources continuously, and in real time, making it a strong player in the online news arena.
- AlltheWeb.com - One of the best search engines.
- Yahoo! - Still the definitive web directory.
- ODP - Open Directory Project - Very impressive volunteer-supported web directory. Submit your web site to this directory and the information will be automatically replicated in a plethora of other web directories.
- Kartoo - If you like the idea of seeing your web results visually, this meta search site shows the results with sites being interconnected by keywords.
- Karnak - Great tool for on-going offline web research; gives you regular email updates when it excavates new information on your research topics.
- FindSounds - Search the Web for Sounds - Great web search engine for finding sound effects and musical instrument samples!
- Vivisimo - Award-winning meta search engine that automatically categorizes results into various topics. Selecting a topic presents results relevant to that particular area, and it's possible to drill down through several layers of categorization. Enter a search term, select a search engine, then watch as Vivisimo automatically organizes pages from the results into categories. Slick and easy to use.
- SingingFish.com - The largest index of MP3 and streaming media files.
- MetaCrawler - Great metacrawler that searches multiple search engines at once and brings you the combined results.
- CompletePlanet - This guide to "invisible web" or "deep web" content has doubled the size of its database to 38,500 sources. More about CompletePlanet can also be found via this earlier review: "Invisible Web Gets Deeper".
- Zeal - Very popular volunteer-run directory.
- Ixquick Metasearch - Ixquick is a little known service that more people interested in meta search should consider. It's easy to know exactly which search engines will be queried or to choose exactly the ones you want.
- Wondir - Meta Search + Invisible Web + Virtual Librarians = Wondir! Offers a unique combination of broad metasearch, deep search of the invisible web, and live human answers.
Webmaster tools
- BrowserCam : Screen capture and Remote Access service for cross platform compatibility testing and HTML design quality assurance - an online service called BrowserCam that will show you how your website looks in a multitude of different browsers and operating systems! Best of all, it's free for the first 8 hours' use! Read a review of this tool on the Browser Compatibility Testing Online - Robin Good' Sharewood Tidings page.
- Yahoo! Geocities - The best, feature-packed, free web space provider on the internet, with numerous upgrade options to make your web site even more professional. This web site would not be here if it weren't for the guys at Yahoo! Geocities.
- Imhosted.com, Fast Web Hosting - Possibly the best web hosting deals on the Internet today - get your own domain, lots of web space and bandwidth, for an unbelievably reasonable price!
- Search Engine Watch: Tips About Internet Search Engines & Search Engine Submission - Everything you ever wanted to know about search engines - which ones are best, how to submit your web site to them etc.
- The Web Robot Pages - Web Robots are programs that traverse the Web automatically. Some people call them Web Wanderers, Crawlers, or Spiders. This web site contains further information about these Web Robots.
- The Internet Archive: Building an 'Internet Library' - Offers free and permanent access to historical digital collections for researchers, historians, and scholars. Includes the Wayback Machine, which allows you to surf more than 10 billion pages stored in the Internet Archive's web archive. The Wayback Machine is a phenomenal search engine that contains over 100 terabytes and 10 billion web pages archived from 1996 to the present.
- Link Popularity - Lets you find out how popular your web site is (how many people link to it).
- Link Popularity Check - Lets you compare the popularity of your web site (how many pages link to it) against up to 3 other web sites.
- Picosearch - Provides a free search engine for searching your own web site!
- BraveNet - The ultimate set of free tools for your web site.
- ChangeDetection(tm) - Know when any web page changes - Lets you monitor when a web page changes (sends you a notification email). Can be easily added to your own web pages to help make them "sticky" (keep visitors coming back when it changes).
- eXTReMe Tracking - Sign up for a tracker, and analyse the traffic to your web site - referrer URLs, IP addresses, and a wealth of useful statistical reports.
Muppets
- ToughPigs.com -- Muppet Fans with Bad Attitudes - Superb Muppets web site, constantly updated with the latest news. The merchandise section is especially comprehensive, listing lots of Muppet-related DVDs (includes full, uncut Muppet Show episodes!), CDs (includes a new Muppet Show 25th Anniversary CD that even includes songs from the films, such as The Rainbow Connection).
- Amazon.co.uk: Music: Muppet Show: Music, Mayhem & More! [Us Import]) - 25th Anniversary Collection on CD - Buy this superb Muppets CD from this UK-based online store! Listen to samples of all the songs by clicking on each track on this page!
- PlayUSA.com: Best Of The Muppet Show: Mark Hamill on Region 1 DVD - Buy this superb Muppets DVD from this UK-based online store for just £12.99 delivered! Lots of the other US Muppet Show DVDs available too (these feature full, uncut episodes and have not been released in the UK) - just search for "Muppet Show". Note that these DVDs are Region 1 and RCE-protected, so your multi-region DVD player may not be able to play them - check before buying.
- Muppet Central - Your Home For The Muppets - Feature news, articles, mailing list and a forum!
- Muppets.com - The official Muppets web site!
- Which Muppet are You? - Quizilla - Answer these questions and find out which Muppet you are!
- Snuffy's Safari, Snuffy, Aloysius Snuffleupagus - encyclopedia article about Aloysius Snuffleupagus, I-Mockery.com | Snuffleupagus Murdered!, Mr Snuffleupagus - Several pages devoted to everyone's favourite woolly mammoth Mr Snuffleupagus (first name Aloysius).
- Kermitage.com - Great Muppet website, including Kermitage.com - The Muppet Show Character Guide and The Muppet Show Episode Guide!
Madonna
- Unreleased Madonna songs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Outstanding summary of Madonna's unreleased tracks!
- Madonna-TV.com - Impressive web site by James Faris, featuring loads of video downloads - including amateur footage, TV features etc. Keeps growing all the time!
- [MLVC.ORG] - Join the excellent Madonna mailing lists here for all the latest news, information and discussions. Also, browse the mailing list archives here.
- Madonna Digest - Outstanding web site always bringing you the latest and most important Madonna news, with comprehensive archive of news and information.
- MadonnaInter.Net - Wonderful web site packed with all the latest video clips and photographs!
- Madonna.com - Everything you ever wanted to know about Madonna, but were too afraid to ask.
Other Music
Films
- Korean Cinema House - Contains reviews, and all sorts of information about Korean Cinema. The links page contains some very useful links to online stores selling Korean DVDs.
- Kamera - Kamera is a UK-based website dedicated to covering arthouse, independent and world cinema. Their aim is to provide intelligent and well-written features and reviews on a site that is easily accessed and updated regularly.
- ForeignFilms.com - The Foreign Film Database - Great web site dedicated to foreign (non-US) films, featuring lots of reviews and ratings.
- fanfilms.net - To find fan films for your favourite TV show or film, or to promote a fan film you've made yourself, look no further!
- Midnight Eye - The latest and best in Japanese Cinema - All about Japanese cult cinema, this site has hundreds of reviews of Japanese movies and insightful features on all aspects of the Japanese movie business.
- The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) - The ultimate resource for information on TV shows and films past and present. Includes links to reviews, cast / crew biographies, links, release dates, posters, release dates, plot summaries etc. etc.
- CinemAsie.com - Excellent web site offering reviews of Japanese, Hong Kong and other Asian films.
- LynchNet: The David Lynch Resource - Fan site dedicated to the one-and-only David Lynch. Includes all the latest news and reviews.
- MULHOLLAND DRIVE - Currently (October 2002) my favourite film of all time, directed by David Lynch. This film cannot be described in a single sentence - visit the web site to find out more!
- The Universe of David Lynch - Wonderful David Lynch fan site based in Germany (in English).
- DAVID LYNCH.COM - Members-only, pay-per-series web site run by the inimitable director David Lynch.
- Easter Eggs - Lists hidden extras (known as "Easter Eggs") on DVDs from all regions.
Eastenders
Indispensible utilities
- Real.com - Home of the RealPlayer media player, that lets you play streaming audio, video and much more!
- WinZip - For opening and creating zip files, no-one should be without this!
- Cool Edit 2000 - Wonderful piece of software that turns your PC into a professional recording studio! Allows editing of WAV files amongst other things.
- Streambox Ripper V2.009 (alternative link) - Will convert .ra RealAudio files to .wav files (must install RealPlayer first), and also .wav files to MP3 files.
- MP3-CDBurner.com - Yamp - Multi-purpose MP3 software - Yamp is a multi-purpose MP3 tool that lets you rip, burn, mix, record your MP3s, OGG and Wav files.
- mp3DirectCut - Free utility that lets you easily trim / edit MP3 files without the need for any decoding or encoding.
- VirtualDub - VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (98/NT/2000/XP). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. You can, for example, do things such as rotating a video clip, shrink the viewing size, and compress it into DivX, all in seconds!
- DivXLand - Software - Codecs, DVD / video editing and conversion utilities, players and subtitle tools. Highly recommend Stoik Video Converter for easily converting between video formats, resizing, changing audio and video quality / compression etc. (STOIK Imaging home page)
- Download Movie Maker, DVD Converter, Album Creator - Download superb Max DVD to Avi Converter software from here to grab DivX-encoded AVI clips from DVD .vob files.
- AVI to MPEG converter - WinMPG Video Convert to convert AVI to MPEG,AVI to VCD,AVI to DivX - Great video conversion utility; includes a watermark over any video clips you convert until you register.
- MP3 My MP3 Recorder - Record internet radio to MP3 easily!
Phenomenally useful web sites
- Shopgenie, Froogle, DealTime.co.uk, Kelkoo Shopping UK, PriceRunner UK, CompareStorePrices.co.uk - Price comparison websites.
- Travel: Flights: Find a Cheap Flight - Online Shopping Directory of Secure UK Shops - Shop Safe - Indispensable list of places for travellers from the UK to buy flights online.
- Guardian Unlimited Travel | Special reports | Low-cost connections - Tremendously useful article with loads of useful links to websites for finding cheap flights.
- Cheap Flights from Budget Airlines with WhichBudget.com - Very useful website that helps you find out all the budget airlines flying from location X to location Y, where each of these can be anywhere in the world!
- dpreview.com - Superb, indepth digital camera reviews - either click on "Reviews" and choose your camera from the dropdown, or click on "Cameras", and navigate to the make, and find the model of choice. See also dpreview forums for discussions about different camera models (search for one you're interested to see what the pros and cons are) and dpreview side-by-side comparison for comparing features of cameras you're deciding between - it lists all the similar features side-by-side so you can view the differences.
- Imaging-Resource.com - Again, very indepth digital camera reviews.
- Steve's Digicams - Less detailed digital camera reviews - but great for listing a table showing the EXACT specifications of everything on your camera of choice.
- Dealtime - Digital Cameras - VERY useful as you can start from the top level, and narrow cameras down by PRICE, MEGAPIXELS etc., so you can home in on exactly the spec you want!
- WhichBudget.com - WhichBudget brings together all the routes lots of budget airlines fly to and from on one site, so it makes it easy to find out "Which budget flight can I get from X to Y?"
- AMG All Music Guide - The All Music Guide is one of the most comprehensive, extensively cross-linked and easy to use musical resources on the web. It's also, unfortunately, largely invisible to search engines.
- PhotoBox - Great UK-based web site for storing and sharing your photos for free, includes great prices for getting real photo prints etc. done from your images.
- PBase Photo Database - Web Photo Galleries - Superb, user-friendly service for uploading photos and creating online photo albums that you can share with people on the Internet.
- easyValue.com - Very useful web site for doing price comparisons in the UK, on items as diverse as DVDs, flights, mortgages, and even TVs!
- T I C K E T L I N E - A Piccadilly Box Office company - Ticket agency based in the North West of the UK, which lets you book concert / theatre tickets online. Offers a regular newsletter service to ensure you find out about new gigs as soon as they're announced!
- ticketmaster.co.uk - Very popular ticket agency selling tickets for events all over the UK. Offers a weekly "Ticket Alert" email service, so you never miss out on any gigs!
- AltaVista's Babel Fish Translation Service - Allows you to easily translate text or whole web pages to and from English and a load of other languages.
- Yahoo! Mail - The best, full-featured free web email provider.
- SmartGroups - The free service for group communication - Allows you to create and participate in free mailing lists on your favourite topics, with additional features to aid group communications / participation such as file / picture sharing, calendar and more.
- Library of Congress Online Catalog - Database of records representing the holdings of the library, including books, computer files, manuscripts, cartographic materials, music, sound recordings, and visual materials; includes searching aids for users. Great for tracking down information on deleted published materials such as books, records, CDs and much more.
- 1901 Census of England and Wales Online - 1901 Census of England and Wales Online. View 1.5 million original 1901 census documents of England and Wales online detailing 32 million people: A unique source for your family's history from the Public Record Office.
- BBC - BBCi - The ultimate entertainment web site, with news, TV, radio, weather and almost everything you can imagine!
- BT Directory Enquiries - Online UK telephone directory.
- Ananova - Great news site getting its information from a vast number of sources.
- Xlation.com - Links and an index to more than 1,600 online dictionaries.
- OneLook Dictionaries - Nearly 4.2 million words in 746 online dictionaries. Also OneLook Dictionaries FAQ - offers an answer to the riddle has been around many years, with links to other
information.
- Bartleby.com: Great Books Online -- Encyclopedia, Dictionary, Thesaurus and hundreds more - Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Literature References: this meta site offers quick search access to a variety of popular resources.
- UK Net Guide: TV Guide - Complete guide to UK terrestrial TV, featuring listings for the current day and 2 weeks ahead!
Online CD / DVD / games / book stores
- Multiregion DVD PriceChecker :: Whatever the Region - Enter the name of a DVD you're looking for, and this web site searches all the DVD stores in the world, lists all the various region versions, and total cost including shipping to the UK.
- CD WOW! - Very competitively-priced online store for ordering CDs / DVDs / video games from the UK.
- Play.com: DVDs, Music and Video Games - Competitively-priced online store for ordering CDs / DVDs / video games from the UK.
- Bensons World - Order videos and DVDs, with free shipping within the UK.
- Sendit - One of my favourite online stores for buying videos and DVDs in the UK.
- DDDHouse - Great online store for buying VCDs and DVDs from Hong Kong, which incidentally is the cheapest way of getting Japanese films, with the bonus that the Hong Kong releases also include English subtitles.
- cdjapan.co.jp - Online store based in Japan, all in English - great for ordering Japanese CDs, videos and DVDs!
- Amazon (UK), Amazon (USA), Amazon (Japan) - The global bookstore that everyone knows. The Japanese store has the added bonus that although all the items are in Japanese, there's an option to place your order through the medium of English!
Other cool online stores
Other Retro TV web sites
- Here Comes Bod... - dedicated to classic kids TV show "Bod" - you can even view an entire episode online for free if you go to the Bod's Dream page.
- The Smallfilms Treasury - Dedicated to classic TV shows produced by Shortfilms, such as Bagpuss, Ivor The Engine, and The Clangers.
Other favourite web sites
UK Jobsites
All sorts of jobs (including IT)
- JobServe - Search, upload CV (make searchable), setup job alerts. Login: email address.
- Jobsite UK - Search, upload CV (make searchable), setup job alerts. Login: email address.
- Monster.co.uk - Search, upload CV (make searchable), setup job alerts. Login: email address.
- reed.co.uk - Search, upload CV (make searchable), setup job alerts. Login: email address.
- Spring - Search, upload CV (make searchable), setup job alerts. Login: username, NOT email address.
- Candidate Control - Search, upload CV (make searchable), setup job alerts. Login: username, NOT email address.
IT jobs only
- CWJobs - the IT job specialists - Search, upload CV (make searchable), setup job alerts. Login: email address.
- PlanetRecruit - Search, setup job alerts. Login: email address.
- ITJobBoard.co.uk - Search, setup job alerts. Login: email address.
Recruitment Agencies
- Progressive: Specialist IT Recruitment - Upload CV. Login: link sent out in registration email.
- Hays - Upload CV. Login: link sent out in registration email.
- Pathway Resourcing - Upload CV. Login: link sent out in registration email.
- Huxley Associates - Upload CV. Login: link sent out in registration email.
- Real IT Resourcing - Upload CV. Login: link sent out in registration email.
- Staff Search Group - Upload CV. Login: link sent out in registration email.
- Strategic Resource Group - Upload CV. Login: link sent out in registration email.
- Madison Black - Upload CV. Login: link sent out in registration email.
- Computer Futures - Upload CV. Login: link sent out in registration email.
- New Wave Resourcing - Upload CV. Login: link sent out in registration email.
- LA International
- Intelect plc
- JAM Recruitment
- Monarch Recruitment
- Informatiq Consulting Ltd
- Parity
- Senitor Associates IT Recruitment
- Evolution Recruitment Solutions
- ApplauseIT Limited
- Rullion
- Harvey Nash
- Ravello IT
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